Amazon - Day 3, Part 2

Our next stop was to visit the Yaguas, we were greeted by an elder member of the group who painted our faces with paint made from achiote. At first I thought it was to welcome us and accept us as friends, but that niggling thought in the back of my mind was telling me this was just in case there was any doubt in the minds of the indigenous people who they should be selling to. A lot of the people here seem to have pets, not cats and dogs like us though, they tend to be things like parrots, snakes, crocodiles and sloths! Whilst visiting the Yaguas we had our photos taken with one of these birds and Marcela held a sloth. This was where we heard out first superstition / myth / belief. They believe a pregnant women should never look a sloth in eyes or their child will be born with Down’s syndrome! It was at this point we had our first sighting of river dolphins, unfortunately not pink, but they were river dolphins!

We went back to the boat and headed towards the Amacayacu Park (Stopping on the way at another indigenous community, where the only thing of note that happened was we held a crocodile!). This was one of the places we tried to book to stay in and now we know why we couldn’t, most of the park was shut, but we had a brief tour of the accommodation there. On the way back to the boat we saw a pineapple growing, now I knew how pineapples grew but I always thought the plants were much bigger and bore more than one pineapple at a time. Next to the pineapple plant was a cashew nut tree, now I had absolutely no idea how these grew, I would have guessed at a plant / tree but they’re actually just a part of a fruit about the size and shape of a pepper. The fruit is edible but despite being quite juicy it leaves a strange dry sensation in your mouth.

We left the park and headed off towards out next destination, Puerto Nariño.